Five Major Crucial Incidents in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Few were prepared for. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders originating in the White House were interpreted as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. The tactic proved effective – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the primary force, aided by relentless activism by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They pursue this agenda via pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We review five moments that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In March, six weeks after a key American development organization is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat reveals that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, past leaders and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, stating that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
